


i eae | 
UNIVERSITY OF /LLINOS LIBRARY 


PUBLIC WELFARE and PUBLIC UTILITY SERVICE 


Bulletin N o. 1 


A HALF-CENTURY MIRACLE 


How the discoveries of yesterday have 
become the necessities of today and are the 
foundation of great industries that are inter- 
woven with the every-day facts of daily life 


For use of Debating Clubs, Oral English 
and Current Topics Classes 





: Issued b A 9 he 
ILLINOIS COMMITTEE on PUBLIC UTILITY INFORMATION 





A HALF-CENTURY MIRA 


You press a button and bright light instanta- 
neously floods the house. Did you ever stop to 
think what is back of that button? 

You pick up a telephone receiver and San 
Francisco and New York immediately answer 
your call. Did you ever stop to think that some 
of the parts of the instrument you are using 
come from South America, the copper from 
Northern Michigan, Utah, or perhaps Arizona, 
and that a veritable army of people are on the 
job to help you make the call? 

You turn a lever and your gas is ready to 
cook the evening meal, heat the house and fur- 
source of that light may have been in the coal 
fields of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ken- 
tucky and the oil fields of Oklahoma? 

You board a street car and some invisible 
power moves it and you reach your destination. 

You want to converse with London or Shang- 
hai, China, and through the air without the aid 
of a wire, or through cables under the ocean goes 
your message to points thousands of miles away. 

A switch is pushed and great engines, having 
the force of thousands of horse power start a 
mill in motion employing thousands of men. Did 
you ever trace the power behind that switch 
back to Niagara Falls, the Keokuk Dam, the 
Cascade Mountains, the coal mines where na- 
ture has stored up millions of horse power of 
energy, or to the brains of the inventive geniuses 
who furnished the keys that unlocked this 
treasure? 

Why, it was only forty-four years ago, to be 
exact, that a man rushed pell-mell from a base- 
ment in Boston up three flights of stairs, and 
cried with great excitement, “I can hear you.” 
This man’s name was Watson. No wonder he 
was excited. For many weary weeks and months 
he had been an assistant in the experiments of 
Professor Alexander Graham Bell. 

On this day, through a new instrument, Mr. 
Bell, upstairs, had called to Mr. Watson. in the 
basement: “Mr. Watson, come here! I want 
you.” And how Watson did come! The tele- 
phone had been born. 

Since 1886 the telephone has been commer- 
cially practicable. The succeeding years have 
brought the development that has put it into 
almost universal use in the United States as a 
necessity in social and business life, particularly 
business; seventy-five per cent of the total use 
of the telephone is for business purposes. . 

About the same time, the electric light and 
motor and electric street car became usable pub- 
lic servants; that is, Edison, Brush, Sprague and 
others made them commercially and industrially 
practicable: the electric light for home, office, 
factory and street lighting; the electric motor 
for every power purpose, from running a sewing 
machine or a farm grindstone to hauling railroad 
trains, driving steamships and turning all the 
wheels of manufacturing plants; the electric 












street car that has solved the problem of 
transportation and has made the large city 
healthy as the open country by abolishing con 
gested slums. 


Gas, as a public utility, is somewhat older in 
years. It was first publicly demonstrated in this 
country at Baltimore in 1816. But the Welsbach 
discoveries, which made gas the efficient lighting 
agent of today, did not come until 1885, and 
general use of gas, as a fuel in the home and in 
industry, came still later. 


Now, think a moment. Suppose by some kind 
of magic, telephones, street cars, electric lights, 
gas—all could be made, suddenly, to vanish. 
How would we feel? What would we do? How 
could we get along? salar 

To us of this day these utilities are necesita 
It is hard to realize how people lived without 
them only forty odd years ago. They are at our 
command so easily and so cheaply that we ac- 
cept and use them as a matter of course—the 
commonplace-things of daily life—without a 
thought of how they got here. Yet they have 
not simply “happened;” or, like Topsy, “just 
growed.” The story of their beginnings, their 
growth and their place in the social, industrial 
and economic fabric of the nation (which will be 
discussed in other bulletins of this series) is| ro- 
mance made reality. It is the romance of every- 
day life, by the realization of which we get to 
know and understand and appreciate better the 
times we live in. 


Imposing Physical Facts: 


To state the merely physical facts of these 
public utility services is to stagger the imagina- 
tion. Words and figures that express the ma- 
terial and money and labor they represent are 
terms almost beyond human grasp. For ex- 
ample: 

Today, the telephone systems in America 
have strung enough wire to go around . 
earth 1,400 times, or, 35,000,000 miles: 
wire; they have placed one telephone 
every seven persons in the country, or 
000,000 telephones; over these system 
450,000,000 calls were made in one 
over ten times the number of people 
earth. \ 

The capitalization of American telephone 
systems amounts to $1,300,000,000; the em- 
ployees number 240,000, and the number of 
bond and shareholders is 190,000. 


Today, the electric railroad lines have laid 
in America, tracks enough to circle the earth | 
nearly twice, or 44,000 miles. They serve 
a population of approximately 50,000,000, or 
about half of the country’s total population. 
They have carried passengers in one year 
equal in number to 160 times the population 
of America, or 16,000,000,000. 












-_ wv 









e money invested in these lines totals 
0,300,000; they employ 340,000. 
oday, there are 6,544 electric plants pro- 
ring 25,438,611,411 Kilowatt hours of elec- 
trical energy—13,000,000 horse-power. 
That much energy would operate a train 
of eight coaches and locomotive, similar to 
the 20th Century Limited, around the earth 
about 28,000 times. It would drive a train 
of 50 freight cars, for 185,000 round trips 
; from Chicago to Omaha. It would light a 
roadway around the earth with “White 
Way” lighting for a continuous period, day 
and night, of 7 years, or, such as ordinary 
street lighting, for 22 years. 

There are 8,900,000 homes in this country 
lighted by electricity, with 161,000,000 lamp 
sockets. . 

Yet the electric light was only invented 40 
years ago—in 1879—and still probably the young- 

st of all present-day necessities. 

Within a few years, if the present demand for 
electricity from farmers continues, the farm 
houses, barns and barnyards will not only be 
found flooded with electric lights, but threshing, 
wood sawing, churning and the countless duties 
of the farm will be done by electricity, not to 
speak of the 275 uses of electricity now practiced 
by city housewives ranging from cooking, dish 
washing, clothes washing, house cleaning, to the 
heating of curling irons, which will be made 
possible to the farmer’s wife. 

Great transmission wires conveying high 

—__ voltages of electricity, now practically link the 
nation from ocean to ocean and from the Cana- 
dian border to the gulf, gathering up power from 
the waterfalls and from the central stations en 
route. Only a few miles of wire are needed here 
and there to weld them into unbroken trunk lines 
such as would deliver power from San Fran- 
cisco to New York. 

Already railroads have commenced to electrify 
their lines, doing away with steam locomotives. 
Every passenger train pulled into the city of New 
Y is taken there by an electric locomotive. 

t freight trains are now being pulled over 
ascade Mountains in the West by electricity. 
es not seem unlikely but that within the 
f a very few years the entire railroad sys- 
the United States will be electrified. 

ar developed many new uses for elec- 

ne is, increasing the growth of plants 
as 80 per cent; another is, the destruc- 
msects which usually prey upon plants; 
ther, heating beds in hospitals. These but 
t the new uses being developed every day. 
















Todav the annual production of gas in the 
United States is about eight hundred billion cubic 
r feet, the gas traveling through 70,000 miles of 
mains, serving a population of nearly fifty-five 
millions of people with fuel and light. 
While the use for lighting dates back nearly a 
hundred years, it has been a standard domestic 
fuel, particularly in the cities, for less than forty 





years. Recognition of its importance, as an in- 
dustrial fuel, is of much later date. In fact, gas 
is only just beginning to come into its own as an 
important industrial fuel and as an important fac- 
tor in the conservation of natural resources 
whereby the energy stored in coal is more fully 
utilized by converting it into gas and coke in- 
stead of straight burning of the coal to produce 
energy. 


Public Service and Public Welfare: 


The lines upon which this country developed 
during the first half-century of its national life 
were largely determined by invention of the cot- 
ton gin and application of steam to rail and water 
transportation and to manufacturing. Is it too 
much to say that what we call public utility serv- 
ices have as powerfully affected national develop- 
ment during the last half century, or that they 
have enlarged life, increased business, multiplied 
comforts, improved health, spread happiness and 
aided efficient living? When any one of them 
ceases to operate normally, the immediate re- 
sults are inconvenience, personal and community 
loss and disaster; life itself is even at stake. 

When street. railway transportation was sus- 
pended by strikes in Boston, Denver and Chi- 
cago, merchant trade fell off fifty per cent and 
multitudes of working people, besides those on 
strike, lost wages because they could not get to 
work on time or at all. In the Summer of 1919, 
telephone service in Christian, Shelby and Mont- 
gomery Counties, Illinois, was suspended by a 
strike of operators. In announcing the end of 
the strike, the Chicago Tribune of Septem 
19, said that the town residents affected 
learned “that modern life without the teleph 
if not impossible, is disastrous,” and the Tribu 
then recorded six disastrous incidents of t 
strike—five deaths and one heavy fire loss 
which might have been averted except for t 
telephone strike. 











Some Comparisons in the Cost of Livin 


In view of the intimate relation of these uti 
ity services to daily life it is interesting to co 
pare their cost to the users with the cost of other 
necessities and to note what a relatively small 
item this cost is in the total living costs of per- 
sons and families. 

Food, clothing, shoes, furniture and similar 
necessities of life, have increased in cost in the last 
five years from twenty-five per cent to one hundred 
and ten per cent. The increase in cost to the 
user of these public utility services has averaged 
close to ten per cent. 

A survey of families having incomes averaging 
from $1,000 to $2,000 a year has shown that cost ; 
of these utility services, now become practically 
necessities, absorbs only from two and six-tenths 
per cent to five and twenty-six hundredths per 
cent of the family expenditure. 

In the State of Illinois, according to computa- 
tions by the Public Utilities Commission in the 


Summer of 1919, street car fares on 54.3% of the 
car lines, the gas rates of 64.7% of the gas com- 
panies and the rates of 69. 2% of the water com- 
panies were either lower than, or the same as 
they were in 1914. Meanwhile, ‘the cost of opera- 
tion of these companies has increased from forty- 
One per cent to ninety per cent; the average in- 
crease was sixty per cent. 
Utilities in Illinois: 

In the statistical totals, which embrace the 
Aladdin-like growth of these public utility serv- 
ices in the United States, this state holds second 
place. There are in Illinois ninety street rail- 
way systems, which represent an investment of 
$456,200,000. These lines carry two billion pas- 
sengers a year. This means an average of three 
hundred and seventeen car trips during the year 
for every man, woman and child in the state. 

The influence of relatively rapid electric street 
car service in abolishing residential congestion 
by enabling the inhabitants to live out where 
they have abundant light and air, 1s illustrated 
in the city of Chicago. There one can ride al- 
most thirty-three miles on an electric street car, 
or almost twenty miles on a still faster electric 
elevated train, for one fare. The average car 
ride in that city is six miles. An employee of 
the railways companies has figured that one can 
tide 400 miles for the present price of a pound 
of ham. 

There are 240 central electric lighting and 
power plants representing an investment of $234,- 
700,000. There are 75 gas companies with an in- 
‘ment of $186,500,000. In addition to the Bell 
‘tem there are 770 telephone companies with 
investment of $145,000,000. 


n Illinois the public utility companies repre- 
at an investment of $1,054,603,600. 









ham Bell. 


services as the cities. 


tors in developing our community? 
and street car? 


lighting and horse-drawn rigs for travel? 


ing and newspapers to stop printing? 


HOW TO USE THIS BULLETIN 


Debating—Suggested topics for, informal or formal debating: 
1—Resolved, That the telephone is of greater necessity than the electric light. 
2—Resolved, That Thomas A., Edison gave more to humanity than Alexander Gra- 


3—Resolved, That the railroads of the United States should be electrified. 
4—Resolved, That the farming community should have the same benefits of utilit 


Rhetoric, Oral English and Current Topics Classes: 
writing; oral English and Current Topics discussions: 
1—To what extent have the electric light, use of gas and the telephone been fac 
2—Could we get along in this modern agC without the electric light, gas, telephone 
3—What would happen if we had to go. back to the use of kerosene lamps for ~~ 


4—What would the world be were the use of telephones suddenly to stop, elec- 
tricity and gas to be suddenly shut off and street cars and railroads to cease operat- 


5—An estimate of time saved in a week by the use of telephone and street car. 


TON 


cg 


Who Owns the Usilieies: x 


There are 230,000 separate owners of ti 
lic utilities in Illinois. These owners ar 
viduals, firms, banks, insurance companies ‘ 
the like, which hold the stocks and bonds of f 
companies operating the utilities. From eight 
to eighty-five per cent of these utility owners” 
are residents of the state. The thirteen hundred — 
independent telephone companies, previo 
mentioned, are owned by thirty thousand in- 
vestors, eighty percent of whom live in the same 
town, where the telephone companies, in which — 
they have part ownership, supply service. 

These Illinois utilities have 193,000 employes. 
It is estimated that there are 600,000 others, more - 
or less dependent upon these employes, making 
a total of nearly 800,000, who get their living 
from public utility employment. There iaré) 153, 
600 others employed in the various industries 
which depend upon the public utilities. Thes 
two groups of employes, with their families, rep- 
resent 1,736,500 people. The wages paid to these 
employes amount to more than $231,600,000 a 
year. 

These Utilities contribute in taxes annually 
$10,240,000. 

In order to provide for the needs of their com- 
munities, the Utility companies must expend in 
the next five years $450,000,000, or at the rate of 
$90,000,000 a year. This expenditure, by, con 













essary by the growth in population and by con- 
stant demand for better service, is used almost 
entirely for materials and labor employed in ex-— 
tensions of plant and service, and is in addition 
to money expended for maintenance and opera- 
tion of the systems. This vast sum of money 
must be obtained from the thousands of investors 
in and out of the State who have confidence in 
the State’s future. 


















Suggested topics for the 

























